My message to millennials is this: if you seek both a rewarding career and a fulfilling personal life, you will have to make choices, but choosing between career and family is not one of them. Don't believe it has to be all or nothing. Stop beating yourself up with the elusive quest for "balance."

As a new mom, I resented my law degree. I resented the responsibility and the expectation it placed on me. But for the first time in a long while, I am grateful to be an attorney. I am grateful to have a profession.

Look, I don't know why you went to law school, but I went because I didn't have the calves to be a model and medical school seemed way too long. After missing my shot at a ring in undergrad, what was I supposed to do? Get a "job" and "support myself"?

I packed up my office. I received my last paycheck. At my goodbye party, numerous drunken lawyers wished me well and told me how lucky I was. And brave. (Is it brave if you don't yet realize just how hard it is to be broke?)

It's time for a new kind of liberation for women lawyers, one that recognizes reality, individual circumstances and professional and personal goals -- and does not depend on the way men define work and success.